Disease Surveillance in China

Disease Surveillance In China

Surveillance for communicable diseases is the main public health surveillance activity in China. Currently, the disease surveillance system in China has three major components:

• National Disease Reporting System (NDRS): The system covers the entire population (1.3 billion persons) living in all the provinces, prefectures, and counties that make up mainland China. Thirty-five communicable diseases are reportable under this system.

• Nationwide Disease Surveillance Points (DSPs): This surveillance system, comprising 145 reporting sites selected by stratified cluster random sampling, covers a 1% representative sample of China's population.

• Surveillance system for specific infectious diseases, occupational diseases, food poisoning, etc.

There are 35 notifiable infectious diseases, which are divided into Classes A, B, and C. The functions of the surveillance include explaining the natural history of infectious diseases, describing the distribution of case occurrence, triggering disease-control effort, monitoring epidemic of infectious diseases during natural disasters, predicting and controlling epidemics and providing the base of policy adjustment.

Data collected through the disease surveillance network serve as the basis for formulating health policies and devising strategies for preventing disease. A computerized reporting system for notifiable diseases has been established that links China's 30 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities. Mechanisms for providing timely feedback to units that report data and for systematically assessing the quality of those data are important attributes of this system.